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Super Bowl committee committed to Feb. 7 game
Justin Matthews reports
TAMPA, Fla. - The National Football League moved the primetime Sunday matchup between the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and the Las Vegas Raiders to a different network and an earlier time. This decision comes after a Raiders player tested positive for COVID-19.
The Seahawks and Cardinals game was shifted to that primetime spot at 8 p.m. Sunday, to prevent a situation where there would be a hole in programming if the Raiders/Bucs game needed to be rescheduled to a different day, according to the NFL.
"These decisions were made out of an abundance of caution to ensure that a game would be available for fans on Sunday Night Football," the NFL said in a statement.
Before last Sunday's Bucs match-up with the Green Bay Packers, the Packers' president and CEO, Mark Murphy, was asked about the possibility of postponing the Super Bowl by four weeks because of game scheduling conflicts.
“We could move the Super Bowl back as far as four weeks," Murphy said during a podcast. "Obviously, we prefer not to do that, but you do have that flexibility if we run into a number of outbreaks with different teams or we have to kind of move the schedule back."
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FOX 13 spoke to the Tampa Bay Super Bowl Host Committee, who says it is focused on a February 7 Super Bowl.
"We're event planners and are naturally designed to be flexible, but as of today we're continuing to plan for an unforgettable Super Bowl that will take place on February 7 at Raymond James Stadium," said Rob Higgins, the committee's president and CEO.
The NFL says it would only postpone the Super Bowl if the league needs five makeup weekends, or if the league ultimately decides to temporarily shut things down due to multiple outbreaks or missed games.
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